


My Garden With Walls

by semperama



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, First Time, M/M, Succulents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 01:19:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10061459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperama/pseuds/semperama
Summary: Zach helps Chris start a succulent collection.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chaibrows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaibrows/gifts).



> This is a birthday present for the super rad Catherine. <33
> 
> It's set in an alternate universe where Chris and Zach live in New York pre-Trek. The title comes from a poem by the same name by William Brooks.

It starts off as a joke.

Zach comes over for one of their usual beer-and-bitch-about-the-world nights, and when Chris opens the door, he finds Zach clutching a tiny terra cotta pot and sporting a shit-eating grin.

“You mentioned you were thinking about getting a dog,” Zach says as he shoves the pot into Chris’s chest, forcing him to grab it. “I figured you should prove you can take care of something a little easier first.”

It’s an aloe plant, Zach tells him. So hey, once it grows big enough, Chris can use the gel inside to soothe the sick burns Zach’s always doling out for him.

“You’re really not half as funny as you think you are,” Chris grouses as he goes to set the plant on his windowsill. It _is_ kind of cute, he thinks, in its little pot with it’s spiky blue-green leaves. He’ll never admit as much though. Nor will he admit how it instantly makes his little studio apartment feel more homey. 

“Will it get enough light here?” he asks. After all, this is New York, not the desert. When Chris first moved here, after it became clear LA wasn’t going to work out for him, he tried to grow some pansies on his itty bitty balcony, but they were dead in a week, their wilted purple petals littering the ground. His mom had told him they probably couldn’t get enough sun. Too many skyscrapers in the way.

“These things are made of tough stuff,” Zach says. “Indirect sunlight is good enough.”

That night, he gets online and asks Google how to take care of it, fearing there will be a million steps, but it turns out that Zach wasn’t kidding when he said it’d be easy. If he manages to kill this hardy, desert-dwelling thing, then he really is hopeless. When he goes to the store the next day, he buys some fertilizer and a yellow watering can—overkill for one plant but fuck if he’s going to water this new treasure with a plastic cup—and when he gets back home and waters it for the first time, he finds himself smiling. God, it’s just a _plant_. He doesn’t need to get all sentimental about it.

The next time Zach comes over, he walks straight to the window and inspects it with his hands on his hips, even goes so far as to touch the soil to check for the right level of dampness. Chris rolls his eyes at him when he turns around.

“You really think I was going to kill it in a week, man?”

Zach raises an eyebrow at him. “I wouldn’t have been surprised if you did.” But then he catches sight of the watering can sitting on the kitchen counter, and he grins—one of those pointy grins that makes him look like dangerously canine—and Chris can almost _hear_ the can of worms opening.

Sure enough, a few days later, Zach drops by with another pot. This one’s a little bigger, and it’s dangling from a hook that’s looped over two of Zach’s fingers. The plant inside has strands of overlapping gray-green and blue-green leaves, which are starting to spill over the edges of the pot and creep down the sides.

“It’s called Burro’s Tail,” Zach says, rolling the Rs and waggling his eyebrows. “Want me to help you hang it?”

‘Helping’ consists of barking instructions while Chris gets up on a chair and screws the hook into the ceiling by the window, silently praying the plaster isn’t about to fall down around his ears. He isn’t exactly a handy guy. He didn’t even know he had a screwdriver until Zach looked under the sink, where he keeps all the tools he never uses. He didn’t know how to find a ceiling joist either, but Zach talks him through it, instructing him to knock with his knuckles until the hollow sound gives way to a firm _thud_. 

“You look so tense, Christopher.” Zach pats his thigh, a little too high up for Chris’s liking. “What, you don’t do a lot of screwing?”

“Jesus Christ,” Chris mutters. “You should do stand up. Really.”

It feels like a triumph when Chris cautiously takes his hands away and the plant doesn’t immediately fall to the ground and shatter. Still, he keeps his eyes on it as he steps down from the chair, using Zach’s shoulder to steady himself. 

“Can you reach it to water it?” Zach asks. 

Chris didn’t realize how close they were with his eyes trained on the plant, so he nearly jumps when he feels Zach’s breath on the side of his neck. “Uhh,” he says, letting go of Zach’s shoulder and taking a half step away. “Let me check.”

He goes to the kitchen and gets his watering can, fills it up in the sink. The basket hangs just low enough that he can water it without a step-stool, but he does splash himself in the face a little. And he has to check the dampness of the soil by touch rather than sight. Whatever. Good enough. He turns to take the watering can back to the kitchen and scowls when he sees Zach’s shoulders shaking with laughter, his hand over his face.

“Hey man, you’re the one who bought me the _hanging_ plant,” Chris says. He wipes water droplets off his cheeks and makes sure to shoulder-check Zach as he walks by him. 

“Maybe I just wanted to see you stand on your tip-toes and spray water everywhere,” Zach says.

That actually sounds plausible. Chris chooses to ignore it anyway.

The plant thing sort of spirals after that. Every couple weeks, Zach will show up with a new succulent tucked in the crook of his arm. A Kiwi aeonium, which is short and squat with lime green leaves rimmed in red. A bright green jade plant, which Zach teaches him how to prune, showing him how to replant the cuttings. An artichoke agave that has Chris excited for a moment, thinking he can make tequila from it, until Zach dissolves into giggles and informs him that it’s an ornamental variety. 

Chris starts to get really into it. He goes to a garden store and buys bright-colored rocks and multicolored pots to give his growing indoor oasis a little more pizazz. He spends a good amount of time researching the perfect amount of sunlight and when it’s time to move his plants to bigger pots and how often he should be fertilizing them. The plants spread from the windowsill to the kitchen counter to the little table next to the door where he keeps his keys, and he moves them around a couple times a week, trying to find the most aesthetically pleasing arrangements.

The weird thing is, he actually feels like taking care of the succulents is making him _better_ somehow. He’s more likely to keep his place clean, because messes seem more noticeable when contrasted with the relative perfection of his beloved plants. Once he’s watered and pruned all morning, it’s easier to keep the momentum going and get other important things done, rather than laze around all day watching TV and waiting for the phone to ring and tell him he didn’t get a callback for yet another audition. Plus, having the apartment full of pretty things lifts his mood. He lived with bare white walls and the bachelor pad aesthetic for so long, and now he realizes it’s no wonder he felt like shit so often. He was always seeing shit reflected back at him.

It’s possible he’s placing too much significance on leaves and stems and soil and pots, but what-the-fuck-ever. He feels good, and he isn’t going to question it.

Well, he’s sort of going to question it, but only because he’s running out of _room_. When Zach shows up with this beautiful purple-and-blue-leafed echeveria, Chris looks at it and groans in anguish, “Okay, you have got to _stop_.”

A weirdly hurt expression flashes across Zach’s face, so quickly Chris almost misses it. “Oh,” he says. “I thought you—”

“No, I love it.” Chris snatches the pot out of Zach’s hands, because even though he has no clue where he’s going to put it, he doesn’t want Zach to change his mind and take it away. “I love them all. It’s just. I’m kind of running out of flat surfaces, dude. I could start covering the floor and like...leave footpaths between rooms, but people might start thinking of me as Crazy Succulent Guy.”

“Ah, right.” Zach rubs the back of his neck, and Chris thinks this may be the most awkward he’s ever looked. Which is weird, because this whole time Zach has been acting like this is all some big joke, smirking at him every time he comes over and finds the plants rearranged again, cracking wise about Chris eschewing the thespian life and becoming a gardener. Chris was sure from the beginning that this is just some elaborate set-up for Zach’s favorite pastime—busting Chris’s balls—but he hasn’t cared, since it’s been so enjoyable. Now though, he wonders if there’s more to it. If there’s a reason Zach is standing there looking like he doesn’t know what to do next.

“I, umm, I do appreciate it though,” Chris says. He turns around and starts searching the room for a bare surface on which to put the latest member of the family. “It’s been...cool. I never would have thought I’d be a plant guy, but this place looks nice as hell now, and I’ve been enjoying learning how to take care of them, and—” An open spot on his nightstand catches his eye, and he hurries over and sets the pot down in it so Zach will see he has every intention of keeping this one too. He even takes a moment to turn it this way and that until it’s prettiest side will be the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes in the morning. “Anyway, what I mean to say is, thank—”

But when he turns around, he cuts himself off with a little squeak, because Zach is standing _right there_ , right in his space, and if anything his apparent awkwardness has only increased at Chris’s lame attempts to thank him. Is Chris ruining the joke? Is he supposed to pretend he hates it? Would this be the time to make a self-deprecating comment and let Zach laugh at him again, so everything will go back to normal?

Before he has a chance to open his mouth, Zach reaches out and puts a hand on his shoulder, high up so the edge of his palm meets the skin of Chris’s neck. “I just, uh, I thought it might help,” he says quietly. He’s close enough, and his voice is low enough, that Chris feels it in his body, rolling through him like distant thunder. It’s almost foreboding. “I know you’ve been feeling a little out of place here and just...waiting for your break to come, and I thought a hobby…”

Chris lets out a nervous laugh. “You mean this _hasn’t_ just been a set-up for a million green thumb jokes?”

“Well.” The corner of Zach’s mouth curls upward, and Chris almost lets out a sigh of relief. “I guess that was one of the perks too.”

Chris gears up to roll his eyes and shove him away, but he doesn’t get a chance. Just as he’s winding up, Zach slides his hand up a little higher, so his thumb is resting against Chris’s jaw, stroking lightly against the grain of his stubble. 

“I guess,” he says quietly—and now he looks almost afraid. “I guess maybe seeing you happy was another one of the perks.”

It feels like Zach has found a loose thread to pull on, and now he’s unraveling Chris, exposing vulnerable parts of him that he didn’t even know he had. How long has it been since it felt like anyone cared about his happiness? He doesn’t even know. But Zach is looking at him like his happiness is the most important thing in the world, like he’ll never forgive himself if he hasn’t made it happen. And frankly, this is not a turn of events Chris could have predicted—that Zach, the most put-together, the most gorgeous and most talented person he knows, would care this much about _him_ , the trainwreck.

Chris clears his throat. He fidgets. He cuts his eyes to the floor. “ _You_ make me happy.”

Zach sucks in a sharp breath and yanks Chris in so their mouths collide, hard enough that Chris lets out an involuntary groan. He clutches at Zach’s shirt to keep his knees from buckling, opens up for Zach’s tongue and squeezes his eyes shut to block out the rest of the world. All he wants to remember is the way Zach tastes—like the tropical fruit gum he chews to cover up his coffee breath—and the way he smells and the way he _feels_. 

“Do you have any idea,” Zach says, dropping his head down to speak into the skin of Chris’s neck, “how long I’ve wanted you?”

Chris lets his head fall back and slides his palms over Zach’s chest. “I guess I should have guessed. You’ve been pulling my pigtails as long as I can remember.”

He gets no warning before Zach gives him a shove, sending him sprawling backwards on the bed, his mouth a perfect O of surprise. Zach crawls over him and takes advantage of the stretched-out neck of his t-shirt to lick across his collarbone. When he lifts his head again, he’s grinning, clearly holding back a laugh.

“By the way, the plant I just gave you...do you want to know what that variety, that color is called?”

Chris licks his lips and nods. “Tell me.”

Zach sinks down so he can whisper in Chris’s ear, his fingers sneaking up under Chris’s shirt. “It’s called Afterglow.”

“Oh my God,” Chris groans. “You fucker.”

“That’s the idea,” Zach says. Then he kisses Chris again, through a smile.


End file.
